In June 2018, the University of Edinburgh ran a top tasks survey to identify what information prospective students are prioritising when thinking about applying to university. In this post, I’ll talk about the method, why we ran the original survey, the insight we gained from it, and why it’s time to do it again.

Love or hate it, following the retirement of Universal Analytics in July 2024, Google Analytics 4 is now the main space for (relatively) accessible analytics information for many websites, including the University of Edinburgh. I’ve not had much time to dig into our analytics property in my current role, so for something of a refresher, […]

Is detailed programme information important to prospective students? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, and analytics and user research show us the marketing value of making this information accessible online.

Liaising with postgraduate marketing colleagues, I identified a need for an easy way for them to monitor data relating to demand for postgraduate degrees. I’ve built a prototype and am now working up a process to continue to improve this.

On 30 April 2024, we hosted an event to showcase the insights we gained from releasing a beta of the new undergraduate programme pages. This post gives a summary of the event, with access to the event slides and recording.

We’re running an online event on Tuesday 30 April to showcase the insights we gathered from running the undergraduate beta – a preview of what undergraduate degree profiles will look like when the new system goes live.

The version of Google Analytics we have used for the last ten years – Universal Analytics – was replaced in 2023 by Google Analytics 4 and the data it collected will soon be deleted by Google. I’ve been thinking about what we archive, how we do it, and why.

We’ve been using an analytics and feedback tool, Hotjar, on our beta pages of the new undergraduate degree profiles. The insight mirrors what we saw in earlier usability testing, so we’re implementing design changes to address issues.

My experience as a summer intern at the Prospective Student Web Content Team and why I think you should be/get an intern.

I tagged along with user researcher Nicola Dobiecka on her quest to understand the postgraduate research (PGR) application experience to discover the points where user research and analytics overlap.